Can AAA franchises do well on mobile?

One Metal Gear to go!

By Karan Bhasin

Square Enix were one of the first to capitalize on the mobile game market, porting quite a few of the Final Fantasy games. The early games in the series are quite dated but they found new life on the mobile, reaching gamers who were too young to play the games the first time around.

Despite being quite highly priced in comparison to other mobile titles, the series did well enough for Square Enix to continue putting out even more of the ports on mobile. The success of Final Fantasy is just one side of the coin though, with a well-received game like Bioshock failing on the iPhone due to compatibility issues.

The bigger news for AAA on the mobile though, is surely that big publishers and developers like Konami and Sega have decided to concentrate primarily on mobile games. Sega, in fact, haves been releasing mobile games for quite a stretch now. With their first mobile game out in 2003, Sega have built up quite the collection of titles in their library.

While many have lambasted Konami for their treatment of Kojima as well as their decision to focus almost exclusively on mobile games and Pachinko machines. Konami were fresh off the success of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain yet decided to move away from consoles. Its clear Konami sees big potential in mobile games.

Ubisoft have also chipped in by bringing Assassin’s Creed to mobile in the form of Assassin’s Creed: Pirates and the very recent Assassin’s Creed: Identity, the games struggle to really provide very much value. Pirates, while an amusing naval battle game, feels nothing like an Assassin’s Creed game at all. Identity is more along the lines of the standard gameplay of the series but it really isn’t anything special. It’s a fairly routine experience that offers nothing new to fans of the series.

Now with Nintendo also entering the mobile game market, it’s going to be interesting to see what sort of games we have lined up for mobile. Who wouldn’t like to see some of Konami’s old classics make a comeback? Just because it’s unlikely we’ll get a new Metal Gear Solid game, doesn’t mean we can’t get us an old Metal Gear game on the mobile. Maybe a few Castlevania games as well?

Mobile gaming has some serious earning potential for the video game industry. Smartphones have introduced video games to an audience that may never have considered trying them before. It also led to an increase in casual and social games, which aim to provide a very different experience from your standard console and PC titles.

While mobile gaming is generally thought of as a market for games that can be played in short bursts, AAA games offering far more content have also managed to gain a strong foothold in the mobile game market. Mobile games in the near future are going to keep getting more and more impressive and while we will undoubtedly have some AAA misses, it looks like we’re entering a very interesting era for mobile games.